Lemercier did not excel him in mind, but in experience. And just as the
drilled soldier seems a much finer fellow than the raw recruit, because
he knows how to carry himself, but after a year's discipline the raw
recruit may excel in martial air the upright hero whom he now
despairingly admires, and never dreams he can rival; so set a mind from a
village into the drill of a capital, and see it a year after; it may
tower a head higher than its recruiting-sergeant.




CHAPTER VI.

"I believe," said Lemercier, as the _coupe_ rolled through the lively
alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, "that Paris is built on a loadstone, and
that every Frenchman with some iron globules in his blood is irresistibly
attracted towards it. The English never seem to feel for London the
passionate devotion that we feel for Paris. On the contrary, the London
middle class, the commercialists, the shopkeepers, the clerks, even the
superior artisans compelled to do their business in the capital, seem
always scheming and pining to have their home out of it, though but in a
suburb."

"You have been in London, Frederic?"

"Of course; it is the mode to visit that dull and hideous metropolis."

"If it be dull and hideous, no wonder the people who are compelled to do
business in it seek the pleasures of home out of it."